A ghost of its former self

On Wednesday morning, weather permitting, drivers on the James River Bridge who are waiting for the lift span to open and close will see a landmark ship pass by.

It will have nothing to do with the vessel itself, but what it'll represent: the 75th ship to leave the James River Reserve Fleet since 2001, when concern reached a high point about the worst of the rusting ships and the potential environmental disasters that they held in their hulls.

The ghost fleet —as it's sometimes called — has become a ghost of its former self. Only 35 ships remain, down from more than 107 at the beginning of 2001. All the ships with highest priority — because of their threat to the river — are gone. Compare that with 2000, when 37 of the worst 40 ships in U.S. reserve fleets were moored in the James.

The exodus has been accelerated by a huge demand for scrap steel and an impasse that has stopped any ships from leaving a California reserve fleet — but freed the U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, to pick up the pace in moving ships out of the James. Fifteen of the local ships have left in the past 12 months, MARAD spokeswoman Shannon Russell said.

The worst of the environmental threats — rusting hulls full of fuel, oil and PCBs, a suspected carcinogen — have been hauled away by tugboats. Of the vessels still in the James, only five are pegged to ever sail again. The rest are slated for removal and demolition.

All reserve fleet ships — in the James; in Beaumont, Texas; and in Suisun Bay, Calif. — are rated from zero to six. Zero represents ships in the most deteriorated state. The ships left in the James all are three or better.

The rate at which those remaining ships leave the fleet from now on could slow, compared with the past two years. MARAD puts ships up for sale or demolition contracts based on which ones are in the worst shape.

For a long time, most of those were in the James. If the legal battle over the Suisun Bay ships ends, that would clear the logjam there. The James fleet has been whittled to the 30s. Suisun Bay still has 70 old ships.

It won't necessarily speed up the departures, but demand from ship breakers to buy the aging freighters and transports and warships has reached a record high.

For years, MARAD paid shipyards take ships to break them up for scrap.

But a recent rise in worldwide need for steel has put a huge premium on the floating scrap in the reserve fleet.

Bay Bridge Enterprises in Chesapeake is one of the few U.S. shipyards licensed to disassemble and sell off idle-fleet ships.

The company has had to buy ships from MARAD in the past year, rather than get paid to take them off the hands of the U.S.

But steel prices are so high, business is good, said Rebecca Robinson, a Bay Bridge vice president.

Robinson said that as long as the market was offering the prices for steel that it was now, she would be interested in the James River Reserve Fleet inventory.

"I want as much of that as possible," she said. "I don't have a problem with any of them."

About 95 percent of the ship's scrap value is from steel.

Robinson said, however, that Bay Bridge also excavated nonferrous metals like copper and anything else that would fetch a price.

"We sell anything that we can. If I could figure out a way to sell fiberglass, man, I'd be in fat city," she said.

The company can take only about one ship a year, she said.

So in paying $1.23 million recently for the Truckee, Bay Bridge is betting that the steel market will stay on its present course.

"We're laying our bets on the fact that it's going to hold for a while," Robinson said.

High steel prices, however, don't mean that MARAD can start a fire sale.

The agency is limited by the capacity at the handful of shipyards that can take the ships.

And the agency follows a mandate to dispose of or sell the highest-threat vessels first, not necessarily the ships that would bring the highest price.